Monday 18 February 2013

Bead soup arrived!

Not mine that is, not yet, and holiday Monday will mean Tuesday at the earliest.  However, it’s always a bit of a sigh of relief when you know a package has reached an eager recipient safe and sound.  Now I get to share with you the soup I sent to Cindy without all the stirring.

2013 bead soup

It took me some time to decide where to start.  For me the starting is always the hardest part.  Blank canvas type of issues – if you can use any and every colour which one do you start with?  Let me tell you for this soup it was my daughter handing me a fistful of crayons: “hereya go mama”.  She didn’t even look up from her own drawing.  You see I just tape down a bit sheet (from one of those rolls meant for an easel) on the table and the crayons are just always spread across it.  I took the five crayons in my hand and thought, huh, not a bad palette you’ve got here.  I lined them up on the paper and took a mental note of the names.  Later, once she was out of sight, I ripped off the top portion of the page.

024 copy

So the Crayola crap shoot offered up : Scarlet, Timber wolf, Salmon, Tumbleweed and Mahogany at the top of the picture above.  You can see the mess of colour the next handful brought to the left.  Anyways, looking at the grey and brown together I was reminded of some very fun chrysanthemum stone that I had tucked away.  Once I had those stones in my hands I headed towards the worktable.  I started mixing a cool grey and didn’t even get the whole way there before I decided I liked the striations coming about and that I should really make some more rocks to go with my rocks!  Witness the two rivals above, with the chrysanthemum stone in front and the simple in design, but nicely made sterling clasp.

I should have caught a better picture of the edges on these, rather than have then smooth like pebbles I went for a facetted flint like edge.  Below you can see a third rival focal made it into the mix.  each of these is reversible.  I created a small handheld stamp with that bursting pattern, a spin off of the chrysanthemum stone. 

BSBP7 focals

Here’s the picture with the chrysanthemum stone that actually has the scarlet right there in the stone (the one at about 9 o’clock), across the bottom is a fire agate.  I find both these stones are pretty but I think I’ve never designed with them myself since their shapes make me go hmmm.  I hope I haven’t been too tricky here.

stones

So these were the principle ingredients and them it was off to the pantry and worktable to round out the perfect bead soup.  Let me tell you how much fun it is to stand in front of my dear cabinet picking out beads… bead soupers, kindly do not pelt me with beads over my extra special twenty drawer (no it’s no where near full) printer’s chase.



Here is the final round up that went out to Cindy to pick and choose and hopefully enjoy working with. The back dish is just as I showed above, but with a couple polymer beads I found going through my drawers.  Moving clockwise we have two shell rings (a bit of a darker grey), strawberry fresh water pearls, dyed jade rondelles, padparadascha swarovski crystal, and some puffed polymer beads.  Then down in front are a variety of roundabout polymer beads.  Some of them started out with a lot more of the pink but the ink in those totally faded in the oven, most curious.  Then a little of horn rings to be the “tumbleweed” and the variety of ebony wood beads were as close as I came to the Mahogany.  There you have it!

polymer view

11 comments:

  1. A beautiful soup and love you printer’s chase, if only I could convince the other half that I really do need one of those (and had somewhere to put it)

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  2. Thanks so much for all the time, energy and thought that went into my soup. I hope I do you proud!

    I can't believe yours has not shown up yet. UGH! I should have put tracking on it. It went out at 11:00 on Saturday February 9th. Doesn't say much for our great old USPS! I hope it's worth the wait!

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  3. Lovely soup kits!
    Nice printer's chase!

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  4. Wow! I love your sharing of what you sent...and I haven't done that yet. Your soup looks great - It will be fun to see how it turns out. Of course, I'm also envious of the printer's chase. AWEsome!

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  5. Your daughter did an excellent job providing you with this palette! This is a gorgeous soup - GORGEOUS! If you lived closer, I would not pelt you with beads over your printers cabinet....I would just breathe heavily over it! What a stunner! :)

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  6. Such fun! Love the story of your palette selection and how you worked with it after. :)

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  7. What a gorgeous soup, your beads are amazing! I look forward to seeing what Cindy creates. I also am in love with the printer cabinet-that too is gorgeous!

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  8. Though I didn't have an urge to pelt you with beads I did gasp with envy when I saw that set of printers drawers :). Great soup too!

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  9. interesting beads!!! can't wait to see what you receive from cindy..

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  10. Oh what a great soup! Your partner is going to have so much fun.

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I'd love to hear what you think, thanks for taking the time to join in the conversation